Another View: Mental health needs serious, sustained attention

Guns got all the attention, but what few words President Obama had to say about mental health should not get lost in the heated rhetoric over the Second Amendment.

In discussions about how to curb gun violence in America, the issue of untreated mental illness cannot be ignored. Underline "untreated."

Mental-health advocates, family members and the mentally ill themselves understand how significant it was that the president pointed out that most people with mental illness are not violent.

That is a good starting place.

The mentally ill are more likely to be the victims than the perpetrators of violence, yet misunderstandings about diseases continue to stigmatize people with mental illness.

Michael Fitzpatrick, executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, told USA Today that the effort to destigmatize mental illness and the national discussion on mental health that Obama called for "are things we've been asking for - for years."

In the aching days after the 2011 shooting rampage near Tucson, Ariz., that killed six people and injured 13, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, there was an intense - and too brief - focus on mental illness.

The conversation needs to be sustained this time. It needs to be national. And the president needs to say more than he has to date.

He promised to launch a national debate led by the secretaries of Health and Human Services and Education. "The sense of shame and secrecy associated with mental illness prevents too many people from seeking help," according to the plan that Obama outlined last week.

In addition, he wants Congress to fund efforts to reach 750,000 young people with mental illness and get them into treatment. According to the plan developed by Vice President Joe Biden, 75 percent of mental illness manifests by age 24. The idea is to train teachers and other adults to recognize symptoms in adolescents and young people and make sure they get treatment.

Ah, yes. Treatment. Access to mental-health care remains a problem.

In 2008, Congress passed a law requiring insurers to cover mental illness and substance abuse on an equal basis with physical conditions. This was designed to provide parity and end second-class coverage for diseases of the mind.

But the Obama administration has not completed the federal rules to put this law into practice.

Obama signed an executive order Jan. 16 directing final rules to be issued sometime next month. That could go a long way toward increasing access to mental-health care.

The main focus of the president's talk was guns. That's the hot topic. But efforts to curb gun violence have to be broad and multifaceted.

Untreated mental illness is the finger that pulled the trigger in Tucson, and likely in other tragedies as well.

That hard and unpleasant fact should not lead to further stigmatization of the mentally ill. It should, as the president has suggested, lead to improved access to care and intelligent efforts to identify those who need help and get them into treatment.

---The Arizona Republic, Phoenix

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Another View: Mental health needs serious, sustained attention

Guns got all the attention, but what few words President Obama had to say about mental health should not get lost in the heated rhetoric over the Second Amendment.In discussions about how to curb gun